Serem team starts review of county officials’ salaries

The Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) has hired experts to review the perks of county officials, including assembly members, who are on strike to press for higher pay.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will lead the assessment of how constitutional office holders at the devolved units including governors, deputy governors, county speakers, county assembly members and executive committee members will be compensated.

“The commission is undertaking a job re-evaluation and a further analysis of factors that we may not have considered given that we did the first study prior to the elections when the county governments were not there,” said SRC chairperson Sarah Serem on Monday.

SRC said the study to set the pay and grading of county State Officers will not necessarily result in a pay increase as it has to ensure the sustainability of Kenya’s growing wage bill.

Ms Serem said the agency will look at productivity, roles and job requirements for the positions against the resource capacity.

Although county assembly members have been on strike for two weeks PwC is expected to give its report in November. That means the earliest the terms can be revised is in December or delayed until July next year and paid in arrears.

The assessment will also determine the pay structure for county secretaries and members of the public service boards.

The gross take-home for county representatives is Sh200,200 per month including stipends for transport, mobile phone airtime and sitting allowances.

MCAs earn a basic pay of Sh79,200 monthly; which is taxable at the rate of 30 per cent. SRC has limited committee sessions to eight weekly, meaning MCAs can draw sitting allowances of up to Sh96,000 each per month.

Each member is paid Sh3,000 per session while chairmen earn Sh5,000 and their deputies Sh4,000.

Triple pay

The county legislators are also entitled to a monthly mileage of Sh20,000 and airtime worth Sh5,000. The annual cost of these salaries and allowances is Sh4.9 billion, exerting pressure on Kenya’s rising public sector wage bill.

The county reps now want to more than triple their basic pay from the current Sh79,200 to Sh257,500 per month.

Assembly speakers are also agitating to have their basic salaries more than doubled to Sh512,800 per month from Sh225,000.

The demand is hinged on the pay structure of the National Assembly where MPs and the Speaker take home 43 per cent and 80 per cent of the President’s salary respectively.

The county officials are demanding similar treatment and Sh2 million each in car grants, medical insurance cover, special duty allowances and domestic staff paid for by the government.